Hello and welcome to the tenth recap of the third season of Orange is the New Black, a Foo Fighters reunion concert starring the cast of Finding Nemo! Every time I’ve told anybody I’m recapping episode 310, they give me a look of sympathy and despair. Perhaps you are making a sympathy/despair face right now, thinking about you and me and this tangled web we weave together.

A heads-up that if you’d like to avoid reading about the last ten minutes of this episode (which includes sexual assault) then you should skip the last page of this recap.

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FLASHBACK! It’s Tiffany’s First Period Day, in which blood gushes from between her legs and her mother informs her that she’s not dying, it’s just “life coming outta ya, like pee.”

Ms. Dogett: Now you’re like a case of pop. You got value. Look, there’s some things you gotta know. Now that you’re a tittin’ and a hairin’ boys are gonna look at you different. And pretty soon they’re gonna treat you different. Best thing is to go on and let ’em do your business, baby. If you’re real lucky most of ‘em will be quick like your Daddy. It’s like a bee sting in and out, over before you knew it was happening.

This will be the first and last time in my life I’ve ever thought, “maybe she should’ve just gone with absitenence-only education.” So this is the world according to The World of The Dogetts: sex is a thing that boys do to girls, and it’s best to just let them do it ’cause it’ll be over soon enough.

Anyhow, Tiffany’s Mom feeds her ice cream and Mountain Dew which I imagine will also come right out of her, like life or pee.

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Back in Litchfield, Officer Coates chases Tiffany down to apologize for treating her like an actual dog JUST KIDDING he chases her down to suggest that perhaps his inability to express his feelings about hanging out with Tiffany is what led him to jam his tongue down her throat without permission.

Coates: I’m really sorry if I made you uncomfortable or did anything you didn’t want to do. But maybe you also… did want to? ‘Cause I could be misinterpreting, women are difficult to read sometimes.

Yes, he affirms, he likes her. He likes her likes her. And because of the life she’s lived and where she’s been and what love and men has been to her before now, she feels flattered by this instead of completely disgusted.

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Luscheck is really cashing in on that heroin deal.

Out in the yard, the Normites are screaming at the goddesses about their various maladies, like hating papaya, having the same itch for three months and not knowing who A is. Or being confused now that A isn’t Andrew. It’s hard to say.

Poussey: THIS IS STUPID!
Leanne: I’d like this to be a little more group positive, but okay.

Caputo orders them to disband The Breakfast Club and go eat breakfast, which is a big disappointment for Leanne. Maybe they’re having Eggs Benedict in a bag!

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In the Mel-Caf, Alex Vause demands Lolly get thrown into psych on the basis of the notebook in which she documents Alex’s every move.

This plan backfires quickly, earning Alex two shots and getting Lolly off the hook.

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In the Audio/Visual Entertainment Center, the ladies learn that Judy King is guilty on all counts and therefore could be arriving at Litchfield any minute now to teach them how to make every fall into a Fall Festival.

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In the yard, Piper recruits more vulvas for her Panty Project with the help of her Aussie Sidekick, Stellar Stella Shane. Piper and Stella McShaney Shane Stella offer Flaca, Maritza and Maria Ramen flavor packets in exchange for a little of their own Creamy Chicken, delivered from vadge to Whisper Pink Thongs.

Flaca says these prison panties make her butt sad, which’s how my butt felt when Hanes stopped making these. Anyhow, they’re in.

Stella tells Piper she’s hot when she’s closing and goes in to close a smackaroo, but Piper withdraws — not because she’s doing that “guilty, whining tortured cheater thing,” though, because Piper is “not interested in sitting around and analyzing everything [she does] anymore.” Stella’s got her hand on Piper’s nubile neck when Alex rounds the corner, sees it happening, and instead of confronting them, just shakes her head and sighs. Of course this is happening, how could anything else ever happen. How could her and Piper ever work as anything but antagonists who hate how much they’re in love with each other, because it makes them weak, because they define weakness as a lack of self-reliance.

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Suzanne’s having a whale of a time walking in a straight line when Maureen shows up to offer up some suggestions for further installments of It’s Two People Connecting With Four Other People and Aliens, by Suzanne Warren.

Mainly, Maureen wants exactly what we always want:

May I suggest that you pander to your audience
with more girl-on-girl stuff
It’s not rocket science

Look, it may not be an exact rhyme, but I’d like that couplet/triplet printed on cardstock and laminated and hand-delivered to the producers of every show ever.

It continues:

If you need to research the activities
I’d be happy to join you
As I have homo proclivities

Man I bet Ilene Chaiken got poems like this in the mail all the time.

“You don’t have to say anything!” Maureen says, nervously, ‘cause it’d overstimulate and destroy her if she did. But she’ll be in the broom closet later if Suzanne, you know, wants to meet her there. OR WHATEVER.

WELP THIS IS ADORABLE!

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Soso tries out the talking cure with Berdie, who tells her it’s normal to be depressed when you’re eating bagged Beef Wellington and sharing a room with an undeveloped tertiary character and all the good books just got burned as part of an arbitrarily designed bedbug prevention program.

Also, says Birdie… maybe Soso can’t make friends ‘cause she’s just not like the other girls. Normally “not like the other girls” would mean “queer,” but this is prison, so.

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Red’s in cahoots with Lorena Bobbit, who brings vegetables to her kitchen for non-sexual purposes.

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Over in the Trip Advisor Top Traveler’s Pick Visitors Lounge Gloria glares at Sophia visiting with Michael while Morello listens to some chump talk about how he wants to smash his hands into her hair which he hopes will smell like rice pudding. When my girlfriend doesn’t wash her hair for a week, it smells like Doritos?

Michael’s in a bad way, though, stealing cell-phones from his Mom’s desk like he’s A or something, ‘cause she can’t take what’s his. “Nothing is yours. You live by the grace of me,” says Michael’s Mom like a queen. Sophia comes down hard too but Michael’s not having it.

You know when your ex won’t let you go to a thing because whatever, she RSVP’ed before you broke up and can’t you let her have just this one thing and then the whole time it’s happening you’re fantasizing that she’s just having the GREATEST TIME at this thing and it makes you madder and madder the more you think about it even though the funny thing is, your girlfriend is actually having a terrible time at the thing? That’s what Gloria’s doing right now, envying Sophia’s visitation like it’s a jolly musical review and she’s stuck listening to 8-tracks of whales communicating with other whales when she’d really rather be watching her son tap-dance. She misses her kids. Aleida is like, “that’s real,” and is also like, ‘do you want one of mine?”

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Tiffany tells Big Boo that hey, maybe she really likes this guy, ‘cause they talk about things and stuff and he hasn’t called her any really bad names quite yet except for that whole dog thing.

Big Boo: Hey maybe next time you could suck his dick, get us an ice cream cake.
Pennsatucky: C’mon you know that would melt before it got here so that’s not a good idea, duh!

Awww.

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FLASHBACK: You know those “parties” in the middle of nowhere that big groups of bored teenagers have because they live in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t jackshit to do besides drink, fuck, do whip-its and make fun of each other? This is one of those parties. I don’t miss these parties.

A tall douchebag compliments Tiffany’s skirt and offers her a six-pack of Mountain Dew in exchange for letting him stick his dick in her, which is an unacceptable valuation that she unfortunately accepts.

He brings her out back and bends her over to get going, and she’s there but not really there, just a vessel, the possessor of a body part her mother told her men would want a piece of. When she gets stung by a bee — an actual bee and an actual bee sting — and lurches away from his hard-on to look at her sting, his inability to give a shit about any piece of her besides her vagina becomes immediately apparent. Pissed and in pain, she returns to the “party” while he yells at her for not letting him finish. I hope somebody runs him over with a truck.

Then there’s this other guy with long-ish hair who maybe cares a little bit and wants to help her cure her sting. He’s new in town and his Dad is as drunk as everybody else’s Dad and his name is Nathan and maybe they could go to a movie sometime?

“What do I gotta do,” she asks, ‘cause that’s all she knows — heterosexual relations are two people getting something from the other, and that “something” is not a movie. But Nathan don’t play like that, he’s like the Caleb of OITNB.

In the Mel-Caf, Black Cindy is searching for Jews and Taystee wants to talk to Poussey about Judy King but Poussey’s hanging out with the Silent Faith-Healer Normamites.

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CO Ford’s pissed that they’re not in a union anymore, but CO Luscheck doesn’t give a fuck ‘cause he’s a drug dealer now and he doesn’t have kids who need to get vaccinated… just like, I imagine, all the underqualified brand new part-time hires.

Black Cindy has located a Jew! The bad news it that it’s not me. The good news is that it’s a Jew.

Ginsberg: My last name is Ginsberg, for fuck’s sake.
Black Cindy: And?
Ginsberg: My Hebrew name is Shayna Malka.
Black Cindy: Huh?
Taystee: Shayna Mala?

This whole exchange is pure gold. Or PURE GELT, if you will.

Ginsberg: I was Bat Mitzvah’ed at Temple Beth Israel, and at the party, I played “Wind Beneath my Wings,” backed up by a full orchestra. I killed it, by the way.
Black Cindy: But hold up now shawty, you got blonde hair and blue eyes, you know what I’m saying? That combo don’t show up much with y’all from what I hear.
Ginsberg: So clearly you’re already an expert! Okay, I’m gonna go sit at another table—
Black Cindy: No sit sit sit sit sit. Now I’m just assessing over here. I’m offering hella commissary for some Jew 411. So I’m gonna need to know if I’m getting my candy’s worth okay? Now calm the fuck down. Next question: what you in here for?
Ginsberg: Money laundering.
Black Cindy: Okay, now we talkin’.

As a Jew who feels pretty confident that she’s convinced her Christian fiancé to convert eventually and who has a newly-converted friend (HI ELIZABETH!), this storyline makes my heart sing Oseh Shalom with the ghost of Debbie Friedman. Once again, I am challenged to recap a Black Cindy scene because she is already funnier than anything I could ever write about her.

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We then travel to a high-security prison where Pornstache’s being held to save us from having to look at his face too frequently. Mama’s come to visit! She listens to him whine about how Daya ignores all his love letters about how they’re star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet and Shane and Cherie Jaffee.

Unfortunately, when Mama breaks the news about his alleged offspring’s parentage, he will not take “you are NOT the father” for an answer. See, as Pornstache sees it, that woman and her baby, like so many women and their babies, are not in fact actual humans with their own needs, wants, desires and dreams, but rather they are vessels created to cure the rotten souls of men like this man right here. Surprise!

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Suzanne and Morello share a touching sweeping moment together in which they sweep and Suzanne discloses that she’s a virgin, and she’s so tender and embarrassed about it and Morello is so tender and sweet in return. All that sex stuff she writes is just made-up, like that time I managed to get a lesbian erotica story published despite never having had lesbian sex before. Don’t worry, I had LOTS of lesbian sex shortly thereafter and you can trust me now.  Anyhow!

Morello says Suzzane’s first time is gonna be messy and weird and bumbling ‘cause everybody’s is, like her first time in joey Italiano’s basement when she was 14.

Suzanne: What do I do with my hands?
Morello: Put ‘em inside her.

Just two little misfits, hanging out in the hallway, talking about putting hands inside girls.

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Tiffany and Coates go for a drive, shooting each other sly smiles while Tiffany angles for some ice cream by flirting. He makes her pull over and tells her what she needs to hear:

Coates: You don’t have to do anything. We’re friends now, I like you. If you want ice cream, you just ask, okay?
Tiffany: Okay.

She loves double fudge chocolate and he loves rainbow sprinkles, so they’re both pretty gay.

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FLASHBACK! Nathan and Tiffany are chillin’ out maxin’ watching some porn, porn that shocks her ‘cause it involves a woman smiling and getting eaten out and seemingly experiencing something unlike the malice of a frightening insect. So this is where we learn that she’s never had an orgasm or masturbated or learned, in any capacity, that sex is supposed to be fun for women, too. I’m so glad she found a lesbian boyfriend.

He undresses her and tells her she’s beautiful, brings her closer, kisses her, puts his hand down her underpants and she’s not sure if she likes it until she realizes that she likes it. “You ain’t gotta smile,” he says. “just trust me.”

“Is this what they write songs about?” She asks. She says he’s magical. She feels amazing, this is not like the sex she learned about back then. This is not a bee sting. This is honey.

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In the luxurious yet low-key ambiance of the Litchfield Correctional Facility Ultra Lounge, Morello’s found a nice young Italian man who thinks she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen!

“There’s something about a man in a gold chain that makes me feel protected,” she gushes. Lennie says he’ll protect her from whatever, from anything at all, and she pounces: There is this one guy who’s just been so awful to her… 

Maritza and Flaca are the happiest clams in the clam-diver Panty Power Club, it’s like they got a little secret under their pants.

Maritza: I feel like I got a secret, you know? Like we’re part of this secret club that nobody knows about. I feel cool.
Flaca: Oh my god you just said that and my nipples got like, super hard.

Gotta say when I saw that line in the preview I was expecting a different context.

Big Boo tells the girls that her friend saw the panties online for $70 a pop, which gets them all a little riled up — they deserve more than flavor packs for all the pussy power they’re discharging.

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Suzanne approaches the broom closet, tentatively… can she do this? Is she able to do this? Does she have it in her to really like, to truly once and for all, to absolutely and definitively do this?

Maureen senses her (and sees her through the glass), gets eager — Suzanne reaches for the doorknob but then, no. She can’t. She’s too scared. She’s not ready.

I hope Maureen used her private broom closet time to jerk off though at least. Just saying. It is our divine right as gay people to masturbate to homosexual fantasies in the closet.

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The Normites meeting falls quickly into chaos ‘cause Leanne’s being bossy and nobody likes it.

Poussey: I mean, this is supposed to be about Norma, and now it’s all about you.
Leanne: Somebody’s gotta keep us on mission!
Weeping Woman: We don’t have a mission.
Poussey: Look, nobody’s here for no mission. We don’t need to be yelling our complaints or cleansing our organs or whatever the fuck that means. I mean, we’re here for Norma. ‘Cause she makes me feel seen.
Gina: Norma makes me feel like I matter!
Babs: Norma is my Jesus!
Angie: Norma is my mother!
Leanne: Norma is my grandmother!
Angie: Norma is my great-grandma!
Leanne: Norma is all of my relatives combined!
Angie: Norma is me!
Riese: NORMA IS A, BITCHES.

Before somebody can say that Norma is their right intestine, the guards show up and the flock scatters, only to be relegated to work duty. This is where Soso finds them, and Soso is a mess. Like nothing matters and fuck everybody. So when Leanne says, “See girls, I told you she thinks she’s better than us,” and Soso points out that it’s hard to avoid sounding condescending when they are literally scrubbing the floor beneath her feet, this doesn’t go so well:

Leanne: You’re a bitch!
Soso: You know what? Fine. Maybe I am better than you. And I’m not apologizing for it.

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In the kitchen, Red’s found purpose by teaching the girls how to cook fresh vegetables and feeding them ratatouille. Eating it makes them feel like people! Human beings deserve real food. This should be a basic right.

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Coates calls Dunkin’ Donuts into the office for a lecture regarding his failure to show up for a thing and also another thing, which means he’s on probation now, and probably also will blame it all on Tiffany, despite the fact that he’s gotten more job training from her than anybody else in this place.

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The Visitor’s Lounge is all spruced up for the springtime! JK it’s like normal, but Mrs. Pornstache is there to say she’ll still adopt the kiddo if Daya’s up for it, which makes Daya almost cry.

Daya: “Yes, please take her. Take her and give her the best life you can give her.”
Mrs. Pornstache: “I will. I promise.”

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Everybody’s gathered ’round the teevee to get the deets on where they’re gonna place Judy King, Queen of Strumpets and Quilts. Taystee’s just thrilled to have Poussey back, getting into it and leaning on her shoulder, far away from the increasingly unappealing band of Normaites.

Poussey: Man, this whole Norma thing has been fucking up my sense of normalicy.
Black Cindy: Uh-uh, it’s “normalcy.”
Watson: I don’t think any of them is right.
Poussey: Nah, it’s definitely “normalicy.”
Black Cindy: Just say “normal.”
Taystee: Why don’t y’all just look it up!
Black Cindy: Can’t! Ain’t no dictionary!
Poussey: Alright, then, I’m just gonna live in my reality and you can live in yours.
Taystee: Aw, I missed you guys.

Hey hey, the crew’s all back together! Also, bad news: Judy King is going to Alderson.

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Piper and Stella are on a date, here’s the theme: Piper wants to know more about Stella so she’ll be less mysterious and then she’ll be less interested in her and we’ll be more interested in her. Unfortunately, nobody wants to give us any genuine backstory on this mysterious tattooed Australian heartthrob, and we get merely these morsels:

1. Stella’s parents moved to the US for a job but now they’re back in Australia.

2. Stella is an only child.

Piper asks if she misses her parents and Stella says, “I do.” That’s the moment when Alex Vause walks by.

Alex: “I do”? I know we’re all lesbians, but isn’t it awfully soon to be committing?
Piper: Shut up, Alex.
Alex: What? I can’t turn around without seeing Litchfield’s newest butt buddies.

This is the part of the season where Piper starts turning away from “a person who sometimes reminds you of the worst parts of yourself but in a way that can feel, at least, honest, if selfish,” into “somebody slowly taking on a kind of cold and hard monster virus.” Here she dares to be mad at Alex for, essentially, noticing that Piper’s been creeping around with Stella like flirtatious woodland creatures.

After Alex “sees herself out,” Stella tells Piper that she shouldn’t have to put up with “that bullshit” and then they stick their tongues down each other’s throats. Oh! But first Piper says her and Alex have been through a lot together… but fails to mention that Piper got Alex locked up this time so she’d have somebody to hang out with.

Stella says Piper shouldn’t do anything out of obligation, only ‘cause she wants to, as if Piper hasn’t been living the “I do what I want” ethos, with mixed but mostly terrible results, for 2.5 seasons. Red happens to walk into the corridor as the two ladies are swapping spit, takes note, and dashses.

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The rest of this episode contains a series of assaults, physical and sexual, so if you wanna avoid that, don’t go to the next page. As Grover would say, THERE IS A MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK.

This is when things ramp up and the episode gets dark and low, like now we’re in the underground bunker where everybody is inside-out and all their ugliest bits are right there on their skin for everybody to see.

So we’re split, here, between two bathroom scenes: in the first, Alex confronts Lolly, who she’s convinced has been sent here by Kubra to kill her.

In the second, Gloria and Aleida are confronting Sophia, because she’s in “their bathroom” and she’s been acting really out of character and it’s awful.

Aleida’s the one egging Gloria on but Gloria’s so torn up over losing access to her son that it’s not hard for her to take the bait.

Sophia: You have no idea who you’re messing with.
Gloria: No? Aren’t you the one who took Benny away from me even though he didn’t do nothin?
Sophia: You’re trippin’!
Gloria: No, I’m mothering. And I’m a ferocious, pissed off real mother but you wouldn’t know nothing about that, would you? Naaah. ‘Cause you ain’t nothing real.

It’s just so easy, right? You get mad at the trans woman and there you go, right next to you is a garbage bin full of jokes and insults and easy takedowns. It’s right next to the bin of recycled racial slurs that get slung around all day in here. So right there, at your disposal, the entire arsenal you need to rip somebody apart on grounds entirely unrelated to your personal disagreement with her at that time. But when Sophia pushes Gloria, Gloria hits the wall and collapses, and Sophia is instantly horrified and apologetic.

Here’s the thing, though: the Sophia we’ve followed through 2.5 seasons would’ve apologized to Gloria when she found out it was Michael’s fault the kids got in trouble, not Benny’s. Orange wants to tell a story about violence against trans women in prison, and so here it is, but the thing about violence against trans women in prison is that it doesn’t need a reason, it happens all the time for no reason. Trans women get beat up and raped in prison just for being trans women. Sure, plain ‘ol discrimination is not necessarily the stuff entertaining and complicated television is made of, but… is this?

In the other bathroom, Alex and Lolly are going at it but Alex can’t figure what Lolly’s talking about — terrorism, treason? The NSA? This woman cannot possibly be working for Kubra, can she? Lolly franticly assures Alex that she’ll work with Alex and tell her everything she wants to know, ’cause Alex is one of those NSA folks, right? So she’ll work with them if that’s what Alex wants she will!

“Shit,” says Alex, exhaling into the vacant embrace of her own (justified) paranoia. Lolly is batshit crazy and thinks the NSA is after her. She’s got nothing to do with Kubra after all. Shit. 

Shit, thinks Sophia as Aleida crouches by Gloria, still konked out on the floor.

Shit. Morello’s new boyfriend shows up at Christopher’s to ensure he really never sets foot in another FedEx ever again.

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FLASHBACK! Nathan’s leaving in the morning for Wyoming and Tiffany thinks shit is gonna suck extra hard without him here to give her cunnilingus and respect. Tiffany is a person who doesn’t do things so much as she lets things be done to her — that’s what women are supposed to do, right, as far as she knows — so Nathan leaving feels especially hopeless. She doesn’t see herself capable of finding another Nathan, all she knows to do is wait for another Nathan, and it’s hard to conjure hope out of stasis.

So Tiffany says goodbye to her One True Love and trudges upstairs for a beer from the bathtub — but Abe’s not far behind, palming a six-pack of her favorite soda and a grudge from that time a small flying insect interrupted his fuck-session by injecting her with venom. He shuts the door behind them in the bathroom, and he’s gonna get it.

He wants to get what’s his, he tells her, but it’s not his to take. It’s only hers to give, and she’s not giving. “I ain’t even fucking wet,” she says. He doesn’t give a shit. “Fuck your mama,” she says, and again. He tells her to relax, and he pushes through. She’s not giving it, he’s taking it, he doesn’t give a shit, and she resigns. Shit.

Her eyes go dead, her body goes slack. He rapes her. She becomes just a vessel waiting for him to finish with her, maybe already imagining it being over. Like a bee sting, except the scar he’ll leave is both deeper and more invisible than what any insect could ever do.

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Back in the present day, Tiffany follows Coates outside, talking about rainbow sprinkles like he’s a Nathan and not an Abe. But he’s an Abe. Most men in Tiffany’s life are Abes. Like the addict in Season One who got her pregnant and suggested keeping the baby so they could get free baby food from the government and make it into casseroles, and then said he was too busy to take her to the abortion clinic. Like the guy who did drive her to the abortion clinic, and warned her not to use all his squirrel pellets when she reached for his rifle.

Is it any wonder she strode into prison in Season One with guns blazing, ready to strike first? Is it any wonder that the story we just got told is identical to the backstory of at least fifty other female addicts on Intervention? First comes scattershot parenting, then comes partying, then comes sexual assault, then comes addiction, violence, anger, numbness, a desire to prove oneself resilient and intimidating.

Coates: I got in trouble. I missed count yesterday because of our little detour. You told me we had enough time and I believed you.
Tiffany: Sorry. I didn’t realize you had to be back.
Coates: Well, now I’m on probation.
Tiffany: Oh that’s nothing, I can help you figure out when you gotta be back for count!
Coates: No, I don’t want any more help from you. All your help gets me is into trouble.

She reaches for him and he pushes her away, and then grabs her closer, asking “Is this what you want from me?” and no, it’s not, but things have turned before Tiffany’s mind has even caught up. She fights back, he lifts her and tosses her into the van, no fuck your mamas this time, but she is a small person and he is a larger, stronger person, and it doesn’t take long for him to subdue her. And her face is the face of resignation, to the thousands of Abes out there, to the fact that undoubtedly Coates has done this before and will do it again, that maybe he wants to keep this job so bad because it gives him the power over women he’s always craved. He’s a creep, a criminal, a rapist, and she’s a girl who’s good at following orders and just wants to be loved. Yet somehow he’s in a uniform given to people who police criminals, not people who are criminals. And there’s her cheek flush against the seats of their new vans.

He presses her face into the seat of the van and rapes her. He calls her Dogget. He says, “This is what you asked for, I love you, I love you.” And all we see is her face: her dead, sad, loveless eyes.

And that’s the end of the episode.

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Rape is not an easy thing to portray onscreen, but that hasn’t stopped television writers from subjecting their viewers to it, often gratuitously. There are some ways that this is done: for television aimed at children or teenagers, like Degrassi or an after-school special, we usually get a cut-away. The viewer is shown enough to conclude that rape is about to happen, but the scene ends before we see it. Then there’s Game of Thrones, Queer as Folk or True Blood, where we’re forced to watch it play out, all bodies involved seen in full.

But here, in this show, we don’t see both bodies, we just see one sad face, and briefly. This isn’t about a sex act between two people, it’s about one person being attacked by another. “I always think there’s like a lineage of abuse,” Taryn Manning told Buzzfeed about her character’s relationship with her mother. “It’s always like, who’s the person who’s going to change the cycle, and clearly it wasn’t her mom.” When I read that I thought, you know, chances are very good that her Mom is a survivor too, but probably has never talked about it or even thought of herself in those terms.

This story is tough to stomach, but it’s also so real — and real in a way that we don’t see quite as often as we see those other stories about sexual assault. How she checks out so quickly, and accepts trauma as an inevitable element of being female. I feel uncomfortable declaring that her past assault “fit in” with her character as she’d been written until now, because I feel uncomfortable declaring that rape ever fits in with anybody’s story, even a fictional character’s. But of course it fits in to her story! Because it fits in with so many of our stories. Because sexual assault is, unfortunately, a part of who so many women are. Especially in prison: Bureau of Justice Statistics found 57.2% of females in state prison and 39% of federal inmates were had been sexually abused in the past. Women in prison are twice as likely as women in the general public to report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse. Once they get into prison, the numbers get darker: although women comprise only seven percent of the state prison population, they’re 46% of sexual abuse victims, and males are the perpetrators in 98% of staff-on-inmate sexual assault cases. Daya and Bennett’s story is the anomaly here. Tiffany and Coates’ story? That’s real. That’s awful and disgusting and so very real.

I’m not angry, I’m just sad.

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